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May 29, 2014

MLA Guidelines for Opposing Resolutions Against Israel

Whether
it fails or passes, the Modern Language Association’s resolution urging
the US State Department “to
contest Israel’s denials of entry to the West Bank by United States academics” has
prompted a valuable response from its opponents.

In their fact-sheet identifying what’s wrong with this
resolution, MLA Members for Scholars’ Rights appear also to have identified
what’s wrong with all the academic resolutions against Israel and calls for
boycott I have seen.

The next time a faction
of your university council or professional academic organization offers up Israel
as the one country of the world most needing to be contested, censured or boycotted,
these four points can help guide your opposition, for it is likely the
resolution you are facing:

1. mischaracterizes

2. “overlooks key facts
and context”

3. “is based on minimal,
weak and unconvincing evidence”

4. “is biased and
discriminatory”

Likely too, Israel has
little to do with the mission of your student government or academic group. In
this case, given the many problems directly affecting the Modern Language Association--the
ever growing use of part-time faculty and the diminishing funding for and
status of the Humanities are examples--one would expect a resolution on other
topics to address some dire situation.

Yet only because the
issue of travel restrictions has been mischaracterized
is it even on the table. Israel simply has border policies consistent with other
democratic countries. And in the past
year, for instance, only .023% of visa applications from US scholars were
turned down by Israel. A considerably
larger percentage of Israeli scholars, 5.4%, were turned down when they applied
for US visas. Larger contexts are
overlooked in the resolution such as Israel’s security needs. And according
to MLA Members for Scholars’ Rights, the minimal
evidence for the resolution included only “four named cases of denied
entry.”

But what most defines
resolutions like this one, as well as the more sweeping condemnations, is that
they are biased and discriminatory. Though
academics have recently faced “politically motivated state-sanctioneddisruptions of travel
in the United Arab Emirates, China, Bahrain, and United Kingdom, among others,”
the only country criticized is Israel, and with little evidence.

Likewise, Israel is the only country of the world threatened with
academic boycott. The comments of the many MLA members who have signed a petition publically
opposing the current resolution are well worth reading.